I was twenty when I helped an elderly neighbor in my apartment building move. It wasn’t backbreaking, but it was an hour of moving boxes. My neighbor had a massage-a-month membership, and she gifted me one. “Ask for Michael,” she’d said. “He’s a sweetheart.”

When I laid there on my stomach, breasts smashed on the soft cotton-sheeted table, prewarmed sheet covering my back, low light, meditation music on, and Michael laid his strong, considerate hands on my back, pulling and probing, gently and harder, working out knots, I’d felt a swelling build behind my eyes, in my head, and in my chest. I felt a hot release rush through me. Not sexual. Emotional. I’d had some sort of strange emotional orgasm. I’d wept quietly.

If Michael heard me, if he felt a minor trembling in my shoulders, he said nothing. He’d probably seen it before and then some.

A penis was an appendage. Jerking one off seemed like the same thing as Michael or any other masseuse pulling and rubbing the knots and tension from my arms. Just a dick massage.

For me, with female parts, sex was more than a massage. It was an internal assault, even when it was loving and gentle, even when I was in ecstasy. If I were bloated, I didn’t want sex. But if I were bloated and you offered to massage my arm, fuck away at it.

I had never told Trevor this, well, besides for our I wouldn’t divorce you if game, which I adored.

“I wouldn’t divorce you if you had sex with a young hot man,” I’d said.

“I wouldn’t divorce you if you stopped showering,” he’d said. He screwed up his eyes. “Actually, that one might be a dealbreaker. Kidding!”

“What if my head got bashed in by a falling tree branch in a thunderstorm, and I acted like a dog, barking and crawling on all fours?”

“I’d scratch behind your ears and feed you gourmet dog treats.” The sweet thing, the sad thing, was his seriousness.

Trevor had begged Trish to not divorce him. At the time, she’d been a secretary at a brokerage firm and had been sleeping with one of the bankers. Theo drove a Mercedes AMG, wore two gold rings and a Rolex, and had suggested she leave her husband. Trish couldn’t resist shiny things, and she took Theo’s advice. Even after she’d exposed herself as a cheater, Trevor begged. Offered to pay for couples’ therapy, offered to take her to Hawaii, offered to take care of Sawyer evenings and weekends so she could go back to school. She nearly caved, it had been Hawaii that made her reconsider, but the banker had made a higher bid. Of course, the banker had only told her to divorce Trevor because he enjoyed the manipulation. Once she’d divorced Trevor, Theo’s interest in her faded.